Emmaline frowned and passed the pendant over to Amal, she had considered herself a follower of Ranald once, but she wasn't sure if Asaph was approve, and if there was one thing that Ranald would approve of, it was covering ones rather shapely ass. Instead she reached into the drawer where she had concealed the odd metal cylinder. It was made of blackened steel and fitted so finely together that the seams in it were almost invisible. There was a stud at the top which she tried to depress with a finger but nothing happened. Pursing her lips she began to rotate the sections against each other, imagining some kind of code. Amal placed his hand over hers.

"If it is some kind of thieves codex, there may well be traps," he cautioned her. Emmaline froze and then set the cylinder down on the table. There was a knock at the door and the innkeeper, who had vanished while Amal was outside, appeared with an officer of the watch, dressed in a rain slicked leather coat and some indifferently maintained mail. He took one look at the corpse and then a rather longer look at Emmaline, restraining himself from licking his lips with an obvious effort of will.

"Nah, its like the others, crossbow bolt, black quarrels, not this lot," he said sourly. Emmaline glanced at the corpse and saw that the feathers of the quarrel had been dyed black. The watchman scratched his armpit absently.

"I'll send a couple of boys to toss it out in the street, watch will sweep it up in the morning, if the damn barber surgeons dont get it first," he told the innkeeper and then turned and stomped out of the room. The innkeeper, clearly relieved his well paying if eccentric patrons weren't going to be carted of to the town jail, bowed obsequiously.

"I have another room for you mine Herr, Frauline, not quite as fine, though it has a nicer window," he dared to joke. Emmaline rewarded the effort with a snicker and followed him out.

Five minutes later they were drying infront of a peat fire in a smaller room that was still better than Emmaline had seen before she had been taken away to Araby. She wiggled her toes in front of the blaze pondering events. Amal was turning the odd black cylinder over in his hands, considering it.

"You know," Emmaline ventured, "this might not have anything to do with us at all. It looked to me like we maybe just..." she paused for dramatic effect. "Got in the way of a quarrel between the two of them." Amal didn't laugh, the nuisances of Riekspiel apparently not yet sufficiently absorbed to allow for puns.  She pressed on.

"Maybe he was just fleeing across the roof tops and was shot at an unfortunate time. I wonder what it was about? Some schism in the local guild of thieves perhaps? Some enemy of the temple of Ranald?" That was harder to figure, Ranald was not exactly a popular god, but he wasn't hated either. Theologically on the Shyallan's had a quarrel with Ranald, and somehow Emmaline doubted the local Shyallan convent was turning out master archers.